Fourreasonswhy you should recordyour football matches

You obviously can’t see everything. So video recording is a really helpful tool.

John HowsonU18s assitant manager at Burnley FC

Introduction

Tactical Analysis with video technology

Personalized visual feedback for every player

Share highlights and strengthen team cohesion

It’s easy to record football matches

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Content

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© 2020 Veo Technologies

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For a long time, video technology has been a naturally integrated part of elite football. All elite level pro clubs record and analyse matches, training sessions and tournaments. Most elite youth academies do as well. But why has it only been the bigger and wealthier clubs that could record football matches? What advantages does recording and analysing their matches give these clubs?

In this white paper, we argue why recording football matches at all ages and levels is essential, easy and available. No matter what level you coach or play, recording football matches is for every football team and player.

We have talked to players and coaches in football clubs and organisations from all around the world to investigate why they record their football matches and what the benefits from using video technology as part of their teams’ setups are. Here is what they told us.

The participants:

Shawn Young, U18s performance analyst in Burnley FC

John Howson, U18s assistant manager in Burnley FC

Riccardo Marchioli, Head coach of Brunswick City SC

Joseba Sein, Member of the board in C.D. Trintxerpe

Mads Strib Sørensen, Head of sponsorships in Sydbank

Kienn Jensen, U17s assistant coach in Lyngby Boldklub and

Veo’s head of sales in Denmark

Introduction

When we look back at a match again, we were never as good as we thought and never as bad as we thought we were. The camera doesn’t lie so it’s great to look back more objectively

John HowsonU18s assistant manager @ Burnley FC

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Video recordings of your football matches is a key to improving the analysis of your team’s performances. With video recordings, your tactical analysis will no longer be a matter of your emotional and subjective memory from a match, but will be a more objective view based on footage of the matches. In other words, recording your matches gives perspective and is the gateway and key to compelling tactical analysis. John Howson from Burnley FC explains what difference video recordings does in the English Premier League-club:

'When we look back at a match again, we were never as good as we thought and never as bad as we thought we were. The camera doesn’t lie so it’s great to look back more objectively once the emotions took out of the game. Otherwise without it we’d just rely on the “here and now” and the eyes. And you obviously can’t see everything and don’t attend to every little bit of information. So video recording is a really helpful tool.'

The classic rhetorical term “show it - don’t tell it” also applies when communicating with football players. When the visual sense is activated, it becomes much easier for the players on your team to understand and memorise your tactical adjustments, changes and improvements. When showing how you want your team to shape—or how not to—with the

Tactical analysiswith video technology

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players seeing themselves, it will have a far greater impact than a verbal explanation which can be interpreted in different ways. Kienn Jensen tells how they use video for the team shape on Lyngby Boldklub’s youth teams:

'With video of our matches, we are able to show our players precisely how to position themselves with or without the ball and when we should squeeze in our pressure and when we should reorganise. Showing it on the screen will help the players choose the right solutions when similar situations occur in the matches.'

Rewatching your matches also gives extra inspiration for the training schedule and will give you the possibility to prepare training exercises based directly on your findings from the recordings. Does the full-back need some extra crossing training or is it more relevant to practise defensive shadowplay before the next match?

Both for pros and for Sunday LeagueThorough preparation is both relevant for professionals who train six times a week and perhaps even more for lower league players who only train a few hours per week and should use their scarce time as effectively as possible. Shawn Young from Burnley FC explains how they use video recording when preparing training:

'The older the players get, the more we use it for tactical reasons, team shape, back four getting up, track positioning. For the younger group, more individual skills: the foot techniques, the passing of the ball and so on.'

Ninety minutes with eleven players means there’s a lot to see and remember. It is impossible to remember everything that has happened in the game from standing on the touch-line focusing primarily on winning the match. Having a source to go back and rewatch the match with a focus on developing the team and players, and breaking down set pieces is essential. Kienn Jensen tells:

'Defensive set pieces is always a difficult thing to evaluate and train. For some reason, players and coaches never agree on what happened when something goes wrong. Video doesn’t lie or remember things wrong. So we can highlight for our players exactly how we want them to defend. And how we don’t want it.'

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Measure your performanceDetermining concrete and measurable goals for your team can be difficult without backing it up with facts and proof. With video recordings of your matches, it’s possible to track and measure performances on both the team and the individual players and track the development from match to match. If you don’t record your matches, you rely on your memory, affected by the immediate reactions and emotions of the game that warp your perspective and analysis.

The scope of the tactical analysis can be very differential. You can share a few highlights and comments with your players on your team’s platform. Or you can ask them to watch the whole game and look for your specific findings. It all depends on your time and resources. However, no matter what level of engagement you choose, the advantages of using video technology will be a noticeable impact and will continue to bolster your team as it evolves.

Of course, what you do on the pitch is ultimately where work takes place. But I think it’s a massive help with the video.

John Howson, U18s Assistant manager @ Burnley FC

Invite your players to watch and comment on the matches. With a system like Veo, you’ll get a platform where players can watch highlights, interact and comment with feedback. This will make your job as a coach or analyst much easier and give you valuable insights in your player’s experience of every situation.

Use your findings actively when you plan training. Give your players homework before training sessions so they know exactly what you’re talking about when you start your exercises.

A few tips for tactical analysis

Keep it simple. Focus on a few key situations where your team did well and a few where there’s room for improvement.

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During a 90 minutes match with 11 players on the pitch, it’s practically impossible to pay attention to everyone and still concentrate on winning the match

Kienn JensenU17s coach @ Lyngby Boldklub

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Players are visual learners. Seeing themselves play rather than being told is more likely to produce results. And every player from top flight to Sunday League should have the possibility to fulfil and explore their talent, big or small.

The Danish Superliga club Lyngby Boldklub has one of Northern Europe’s most renowned talent academies and has sold teenage players to clubs like Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan and Red Bull Salzburg during the last couple of years. Kienn Jensen tells about their work with youngsters:

11 players in 90 minutes seen from the touchlineFor a coach standing on the touch-line focusing on winning the match it can be difficult to remember the performance of every single player in detail. When you record the match, it gives you the possibility to base your individual feedback on concrete findings that don’t rely on a good memory and assumptions. Kienn Jensen says:

Our job is ultimately to make our players as good as possible. Video recording is basically a tool that makes the job much easier.Kienn Jensen, U17s coach @ Lyngby Boldklub

Personalized visual feedbackfor every player

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'Without the video, we couldn’t work so much in-depth with individual training. During a 90 minutes match with 11 players on the pitch, it’s practically impossible to pay attention to everyone and still concentrate on winning the match. Even if the coaching team consists of multiple coaches.'

With good recordings of your matches, you have the opportunity to show each player where and how they can improve and optimise their abilities in order to reach their potential. Not only will this be a benefit of the whole team. It will help develop the player’s individual abilities and help her or him reach their full potential.

Riccardo Marchioli from the Australian semi-professional club Brunswick City SC explains it:

'Systems like Veo that allow the coaching staff to tag highlights or important pieces of data and share them with players in a form that they can view at home in their own time is invaluable when you’re dealing with semi-professional footballers who perhaps cannot come into the club every day but still want to learn, improve and compete at their threshold.'

Small patterns become clearDeveloping talent is often about adjusting small things and developing each players’ strengths to the fullest. But more critically, their weaknesses mustn’t stand in the way of their development as footballers and could even be developed into assets. Kienn Jensen tells an anecdote about a talented midfielder with a big problem:

'With video, we can help the player develop on even the smallest details. In Lyngby Boldklub, we had a midfielder who made too few tackles and interceptions. For a player on his position, it was quite critical for his development. After reviewing the video with him, we noticed that he was rarely in a position to engage. As we play on elite level where things happen quickly, it was already too late for him then to attempt a tackle. So even though he was actually a good tackler, he was never in a position to make the tackle.

It’s much easier to see a pattern in these small things when you can watch a match again and again. That’s the whole point of using video.'

The young player could see it for himself and adjust his game. Now, he’s on the verge of the first team who plays in the 3F Superliga, the top tier of Danish football.

Let the players review themselvesNew technologies and systems allow players to view and review their own performances. You can make players take a look at situations where there’s a potential for improvement as well as situations where the players do well, provide feedback and allow the players to improve their own game. If you

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prioritise individual training, this can be based on the video evaluation as well. Riccardo Marchioli says: 'We tag highlights for individual players to view on their smartphones as well as sharing various tactical moments with the team to view and discuss among themselves. Veo allow us to refine and improve all aspects of our play as we educate and highlight specific moments and review those with our players.' For Burnley FC’s talent development too, it’s a matter of helping the young players reach their potential, by coaching and providing the tools for players to improve their own game.

When they’re still young lads, they’re still learning and video is a great way of helping them improve.

Shawn Young, U18s performance analyst in Burnley FC

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A few tips for individual feedback

Ask your players to mark their own highlights and areas to improve. This way, your players will learn how to take responsibility for their own progress and you will get insights in your players’ focus and priorities.

Take individual conversations with your players on a regular basis. Backup your points with two or three highlights and your players will feel valuable.

Divide your players into smaller groups and let them evaluate their performances together. Your players will learn a lot when they evaluate each other and it will eventually heighten the level of their conversations and strengthen team cohesion.

Since we started publishing videos recorded with Veo, it has helped us get more and more players, family members and fans to follow us on social media.

Joseba SeinMember of the board @ CD Trintxerpe

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According to mainstream culture theory, every organisation’s culture is an ongoing negotiation between its visible artefacts and its basic underlying assumptions. One affects the other and vice versa. Part of every team’s culture are the memories of great wins, bitter defeats and everything in between. Video recordings of highlights can give the memories a little help and strengthen the stories and therefore the culture of your team and club. In other words, you can affect your team’s culture by creating and sharing highlights from your matches.

Riccardo Marchioli gives an example of how you can affect the perception of a match by showcasing positive moments:

'This week we used Veo to prepare a package of positive moments of play. It’s easy to use technology like Veo only to focus on negative or fixable moments so we decided to use the footage to highlight our strong passages of play, good positioning, and times that we entered zones specific to our playing model.'

Common understandings and memories are key parts of building team cohesion and a strong bond between your players. Another reason to share highlights from your matches is to strengthen the whole culture around your club using social media to show your team’s best moments to the world.

Joseba Sein from the Basque club CD Trintxerpe, partnership club of townsmen Real Sociedad, tells how they have been using recordings of their matches to strengthen the atmosphere surrounding their club:

Share highlightsand strengthen team cohesion

'Since we started publishing videos recorded with Veo, it has helped us get more and more players, family members and fans to follow us on social media. It’s something that brings us a little closer to our fans and also does so our players can see goals and highlights from other teams.'

Goal of the centurySo, did your team just score the goal of the century? Video will give you the opportunity to share this with family, friends, fans, and the rest of the club. Today’s video applications make it easy and simple for everyone to create highlight reels and use visual effects in a good quality and easily upload the to social media.

Most youth players and players in clubs at grassroot-level have never seen video of themselves playing football. And it’s a shame that it’s an experience only for the few. Here is what Mads Strib Sørensen says about bringing cameras to the earliest stages of the Danish Cup, Sydbank Pokalen:

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'As only a few clubs ever get to experience the magic of playing the Cup Final we wanted to bring the excitement of the Final out to them, no matter what level they play at. One of the ways we found that we could do this was showcasing the grassroots players and their fantastic goals and plays that normally never attracts attention.'

Here at Veo, we have a dream of a world where every single football match is filmed. A world where you will never miss a moment. Right now, watching your own games is a privilege only for the few. We want to change that. And we will.

Make replays and slow motion effects to create the feeling of watching a match on a professional broadcast. It’s easy to create highlight reels with free video applications.

Spice up the yearly after-the-season-speech for the players with highlights of the most beautiful moments and perhaps a few moments that very not so pretty.

A few tips for sharing highlights

Share your highlights on social media. Your players will repost and share their best moments with friends and family and create an even bigger buzz around your team.

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We film every game. I think it’s really beneficial for the players and for the team, moving forward.

Shawn YoungU18s performance analyst in Burnley FC

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Filming football matches used to be quite a hassle. You would require an elevated platform, an expensive video camera mounted on a movable tripod, and a camera operator with camera skills who could stay focused and silent throughout the whole game. After the match you’d require a person with the knowhow to cut and edit the video and a server with storage space for numerous full recordings of football matches.

... without a cameramanBut instead of letting a parent, assistant coach or an injured or not selected player film the match, modern technology has made it possible to record matches without a cameraman. Systems like Veo removes most of the hassle and make recording easy. Veo frees the coach’s time and resources for the team.

Veo automatically tracks the ball which means that nobody has to physically stand there filming, the system does it all on its own.

Riccardo Marchioli, Head Coach at Brunswick City SC

It’s easyto record football matches ...

As most people these days carry around a powerful computer in their pockets (yes, it’s your smartphone), setting up the camera can be done at the pitch and only takes a split second. Riccardo Marchioli tells about their experience with setting up Veo in their semi-professional club:

'Our club officials set it up quite easily. It is very stable and offers a lot of elevation, giving a clear picture of the field. The smartphone app is very straightforward and actually allows us to watch the footage in real time, either on the bench or on the sideline.'

And with a tripod, it’s easy to get a great overview of the pitch without having to build any temporary elevated platforms that are high enough and with enough space for a camera and its operator.

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'The fact that we can leave the camera on mount and just leave the camera up standing and it follows the ball is a really good feature.

Shawn Young, Performance Analyst @ Burnley FC

Make sure to capture all the action. During a 90 minute recording it can be easy to lose focus and you may miss a goal or the pivotal moment in the match. Veo never misses a moment of the action. Capturing the entire field at all times with a 180 degrees camera.

With Veo, the whole pitch is recorded and a broadcast view with marked highlights is created automatically. This means recordings of the goals are ready to be downloaded and shared easily.

A few tips for recording football easily

Record football with an AI-powered camera and a tripod on the sideline. It’s easy to set up and you don’t have to worry about controlling the camera. This way, you can use your attention to coach and guide your team to victory.

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Veo has created a system that is good enough for the elite, but still available for the grassroots. Key to this has been to make a system that’s easy to use no matter the user’s technical proficiency. With users in top tier leagues in Europe, North America and Asia as well as on grassroots level all over the world, we think we succeeded in making recording football easy and available for everyone.